KNUCKLES: Shine in the Storm
by MobileSuitSonic
Summary: Side-story to THE COMET, THE DEVIL, AND THE HEDGEHOG. Read it for more info. Knuckles, out to avenge the disappearance of the Echidna race, looks for Thrash the Tasmanian Devil with the intent of forcing him to restore his people as the Super Genesis Wave composites Mobius with the prehistoric Universal Century. The trail leads to a war-torn jungle in what was southern Yurashia.


**PROLOGUE 1**

_Albion _

_Mobian Year 3237.  
_

The devastated land of Albion, silent apart from the scads of rain falling on rubble. A warp ring stood in the midst of the ruins. Before it stood the lone muscular figure of Thrash the Tasmanian Devil, satisfied by the sight of the shining portal, casting a long shadow.

"Thrash! You _are_ here!" Thrash was no longer alone. A red Echidna, Knuckles, descended a mound of rubble. He was not happy to see him. "You better have some answers!"

The Devil looked over his shoulder, to see him advancing. Two Hedgehogs, a pink and a blue one, hurried up from behind, catching up to the Echidna.

"This the guy you were talking about a second ago?" asked the blue one, Sonic.

Knuckles confirmed. "We were in Downunda," he said, "He was helping out the Freedom Fighters there."

"Right-o," said Thrash, leaning against the ring "and after that bit of business, I took up me old quest. Which is now all done, thanks in part to you, Knuckles."

"Thanks to me?"

A growling creature, vaguely resembling Thrash but was much closer to a mobini than a proper Mobian, seemed poised to pounce on the Echidna and his companions. Thrash had to kneel down and stroke its head, in an attempt to calm it down. "You let me keep that warp ring I found after our little adventure in Downunda," he explained. "That help me take care of those girls you had posted at the Master Emerald… and _that_ helped me take care of all the Echidnas in yer homeland."

Knuckles found himself stumbling over his words in light of the revelation. Eventually, he cobbled together one sentence: "Where are they?"

"Gone," said Thrash, matter-of-factly. "Never to trouble this world again." With a snap, the warp ring behind him shut, reduced to a small gold trinket, which he held up to spite his interrogator with.

Knuckles torpedoed forward and smacked the Devil in the chin, knocking him onto his back, screaming "Bring them back!" He began pounding him in the face, demanding a reversal of the act.

Thrash let out a supersonic "NO!", sending the Echidna flying backward, freeing him from his weight.

Knuckles came down on a pile of rubble, with a few of those creatures circling him.

"I'm a just man," said Thrash, pointing a finger, "so I'm letting you live. Remember that." Suddenly, something stuck him in the back with all the force of a battering ram. Knocked to his knees, he looked over his shoulder, to see the intervening blue Hedgehog.

"Okay," said Sonic, "I gave you your little villainous speech, I let Knuckles get the first hit in. Now, you either bring back all of his kind, or we're gonna tussle!"

Thrash rose back onto his feet, nursing his back in the process. "I've got no beef you," he said with a cough, "and this ain't your fight mate." He clearly wasn't interested in duking it out with Sonic, who was already revving up his feet.

"It is _now_," Sonic countered. "Last chance before I run you into the ground!"

"Well, in that case, my answer is RAAAAAAAA!" Another hyper scream, one which forced the Hedgehog into the air, flying backwards a long way.

Suddenly, a punch to Thrash's right side. Knuckles was back in the game, demanding the Echdinas restored.

"Not on yer life, mate!" the Devil snarled, replying with a right hook of his own. "I worked my tail off erasin' your blasted kind from the planet!"

"They were innocent!" Knuckles yelled, throwing a left straight.

"So were my people!" Thrash countered, blocking the punch. "Justice is served. Now my job is done! Now we're—OOF!" The Echidna had issued him a strong body blow, one countered by a hook of his own. "Now we're even," he said, able to finish his sentence.

Knuckles wasn't backing down. "'Even'?! How are we even?!" He readied another punch.

"'cause now we're both the last of our kind," Thrash said, elaborating and catching the strike with his hand. Knuckles was thrown aside like a rag doll, and came down in a mud puddle. "_My _kind used to flourish on Downunda," the Devil went on. "Then _your_ people came and turned them into lab experiments."

When Knuckles got up, he was face-to-teeth with one of those creatures they were fighting.

"And that's the result," Thrash coldly stated, in regard to the beast before his enemy. "The Echidnas messed with our genes, trying to create the Devil Dogs. Nobody remembers why—not that they had the right to do it at all." By this point, three of these things surrounded the Echidna. "Mums and Dads sired pups instead of babies. Each generation, as we get bred out of existence, are told stories of _who _did this to us! And so here we are: the last of the Tasmanian Devils and the last of the Echidnas. Eye for an eye, mate."

Finally, the D-Dogs made their move, only to be quickly punched out by Knuckles.

"That's idiotic!" Knuckles yelled. "That was generations ago! Nobody here even _knew _about it! They could've helped to reverse the damage! Now, because of you, we're **both** extinct!"

"Don't lay this at my feet!" Thrash shot back. "Your kind started all this! Give 'em enough time, they'd do it again! _I finished it!_"

"I'm still standing!" A powerful punch to the face from Knuckles, and soon, the pair were at in again, rolling in the mud and downpour. "And I'm gonna _make _you bring the Echidnas back!"

This struggle was interrupted by a pouncing D-Dog, knocking the Echidna off her brother.

"Sonic!" Knuckles cried out. "Keep the Devil Dogs off me!"

Sonic, freshly back in the fight, had no objections. "Team Fighters! Form up! I've got a plan!"

Unfortunately for Knuckles, he wouldn't have the leisure to watch his friends' remarkable efforts. The hulking violet Devil's fist made certain of that. "I was gonna let you walk away!" he said, breathing heavily. "You're making this harder than it has to be!"

The enraged Echidna wasn't going to throw in the towel. "You took my family! The love of my life!" He may have been hurting, but Thrash had to be having it just as bad. He unleashed a flurry of punches and kicks was at the Devil. Even though not all of them connected, there were some successes. "You robbed it all from me because of your stupid, short-sighted obsession!"

Thrash wasn't going to kiss and make up. "It's justice! It's what my kind is owed! It—!" With a muffed attempt at a punch, he was slammed into the mud.

In the middle of the struggle, as the two combatants discovered, Sonic, Amy, and Tails had constructed a makeshift corral to contain Thrash's mutant siblings. He cracked a smile—he'd be lying if he told himself it wasn't an impressive feat.

Knuckles stood over the Devil, fists still clinched. "Your dogs are caught," he told him. "You're beaten. _It's over._ Bring my people back. **Now.**"

"I'm ashamed to say it, but it looks like I can't take ya in a fair fistfight… so I won't use me fists." Another scream which sent Knuckles rolling backward before anchoring himself into the ground thanks to the spikes on his hands.

Soon, the Guardian was inching toward Thrash, hugging the ground to avoid the brunt of the scream. He gave the Devil a powerful left hook, that sent him spinning in the air and crashing on his back.

"And _that_ is why you don't mess with Knuckles," Sonic remarked.

Tails and Amy were quick to secure the downed Devil, but it wouldn't last, as a Knuckle-like robot entered the fray.

Thrash took the opportunity to bolt as the machine engaged Sonic and friends with what appeared to be vines. He escaped via warp ring, Knuckles following behind.

The fight continued all across Mobius, warping from Albion, to Downunda, to White Acropolis, and, at last, to the Master Emerald shrine on Angel Island. The ring was about to lose its charge by this point, forcing Thrash to make one last getaway jump. The failing ring expanded once more as he leaped from the shrine into the open air below, and through the portal.

Knuckles caught it, but it was too late. The ring had gone dead.

He got away.

A whoosh announced the coming of another warp ring, and familiar voices with it. "…so I says to the guy 'no, you're luggage!' and he was all like—Hey! Knux! Look who we found!" Vector, Charmy, and Espio had returned, with the recently-missing Ray and Mighty.

The Egg Grape-addled Bee jumped into a thick patch of snow that had been brought to the island during the fight and began playing in it.

Espio's attention, however, was more focused toward the dead ring. "An empty warp ring? Where were you trying to go… why is there snow?"

"Where are the girls?" Mighty asked. "I missed them, too."

Knuckles wouldn't respond, even though Vector tried to get him to talk. Finally, the guardian made his move. He smashed the ground in frustration, and broke down sobbing.

The seeds of revenge had been sewn.

* * *

**PROLOGUE 2**

_Side 2, Bunch 8 "Island Iffish"_

_January 4, UC 0079 (Thousands of years ago…)_

It had been a little more than twenty-fours since Zeon Generalissimo Gihren Zabi made his fiery declaration of war against the Earth Federation. Literally three seconds after that speech ended, his fleets open fired. The Moon quickly fell under the Zabi crest and the collection of space colonies known as Side 2 had fallen under the onslaught.

The militia of Island Iffish, the capital bunch of Side 2, scrambled around the armory for weapons. One day into hell, and so many would-be soldiers were ready to feast on the Zeon leader's carcass. Yet outside, the invading Zeon space forces began painting the transparent "rivers" used for mirror-reflected sunlight as the sounds of battle raged. The paint was heat-resistant. Few within the colony understood what their plan was.

It would be too late by then. On the orders of fleet commander Dozle Zabi, GG gas was pumped into the cylinder. The gas was distributed quickly and within a minute, all life within Island Iffish ceased to exist. Only a single Federation officer cadet, survived the gassing, thanks to his wearing a normal suit at the time. His name: Shiro Amada, ironically a native of that very colony. It was never really clear as to how he lived to tell the tale, especially with Zeon surrounding the depopulated cylinder, but he got out.

This week-long opening battle, the One Week War, ended in crushing defeat for the Federation spacy, with 70% of the Tianem Fleet sunk, and the destruction of Sides 1, 2, and 4.

As for Island Iffish, it became the largest ballistic weapon ever seen up to that point in history in what Zeon would christen "Operation British". On January 10, the dead colony was dragged away from its position at Lagrange-4 and entered a slingshot orbit around the moon. Its intended target: the Earth Federation Forces' Command Center at Jaburo in South America. The remains of the Tianem Fleet attempted to destroy the cylinder, but only succeeded in altering its course. At 0800 Greenwich Time, on January 15, Iffish entered Earth's gravity well; the following day, it would break into three pieces above the Persian Gulf, all of which would plummet into the planet's atmosphere. One section came down near Lake Baikal in Siberia, triggering violent earthquakes and tsunamis that ravaged Eastern Asia, and another disintegrated into smaller bits, bombarding the United States and Canada with a hail of superheated debris. The largest section fell directly upon Sydney, Australia, forming a three-hundred-mile crater. British's victims were too numerous to count, and the news too horrifying to be believed, but with the passage of time, it had become clear that half of humanity was dead.

Even more tragically, the war had only started. As hard as this catastrophe was to believe, harder still would be what would occur in eight months…

* * *

**AUTHOR'S NOTES, or "THE CONTINUATION FEW WANTED TO DO"**

Once upon a time, there was an asshole named Ken Penders. He was a Trekkie with an unhealthy amount of Unwarranted Self-Importance who wrote a faulty story arc for a certain now-defunct comic book that was intended to be a grand finale, simply titled "Endgame"... and the less said about the one he wrote about the titular character coming into the real world and playing around with his actual kids, the better. Over time, his storylines became increasingly bizarre, with a ton focus on one character's genealogy. When his editors came up to him with complaints about this future-based arc of his and requests for changes, he threw a temper tantrum and quit. He was replaced by Diet Yoshiyuki Tomino, Ian "Potto" Flynn. Needless to say, things started picking up for the series, now that the artwork had improved and better writers were on deck... but at some point Mr. Penders woke up one morning and either decided "I'm not rich enough!" or got angry over the receding soap opera crap that had plagued his old series. Whatever the reason, he used the entitled douchebag's ultimate weapon: he filed a lawsuit over usage of the characters he'd created.

Things for the heroes went south at a breakneck speed, with one character went into coma, another got shamed into exile for previous actions, an evil wizard become king and possessed his student and troubadour, a hero got turned into a robot, and rumors of a traitor circulated... and that's just a sample. Mr. Penders didn't care if people wanted to see a satisfying resolution to everything. He couldn't be like, say, Jack Kirby who DIDN'T take the New Gods with him when he went back to Marvel Comics. NOOOOOOO... he wanted his money, dammit! So he gained an ally in the Japanese video game company that owned the comic's characters who appeared in the games. Lacking the vision of alternate universes and timelines, such as what guys like Konami (_Castlevania_), Capcom (_Mega Man_), and Sunrise (all things _Gundam_) had, this company sided with Mr. Penders, feeling that their established characters shouldn't have relatives and stuff that weren't established in their games. To make matters worse, what should have been a one-sided victory for the fandom never materialized thanks in part to the series' publisher not keeping good enough records about who owns what. Penders got his characters, the fans got no closure, and the comic got a reboot that nobody asked for. It would creep along at a top speed of five miles per hour, leaving a column of smoke in its wake for a little less than forty issues. Then it quit completely. As for Mr. Penders, he took his characters, beat them with all with an ugly stick, and made an unreleased comic based loosely on his original ideas for the future arc. It has never seen the light of day and was mocked into obscurity.

It doesn't take Michio Kaku to figure out that I'm relating the ramifications behind the forced reboot of the late Archie _Sonic _comics, that ultimately killed the series. Low points for the heroes and a billion threads left hanging. The most insulting of these being the "Endangered Species" arc, whose ending is recreated in Prologue 1 above. It was never Flynn's intent for it to end that way, but Penders' thirst for the Almighty Dollar threw a wrench in everything. It ended on such a downer, that pisses everyone off and makes the reader demand to see what happens next. Sorry. Reboot.

Despite this shared sentiment, I have been surprised to have discovered that only **two** people have even attempted a continuation, with Archie Sonic Online (a group I've recently severed ties with) flat-out ignoring the ending we got in favor of what Flynn had originally planned. Me? I wanted to clean up the mess left by Kenny-boy's "stupid, short-sighted obsession".

Even so, I can't really do this monumental task alone. Unlike Flynn and Penders, I like to keep in touch with the fans and use their suggestions and ideas, not only in "Shine in the Storm", but the main "The Comet, the Devil, and the Hedgehog" story as well, though in regard to the latter it's primarily dialogue. Shoot me a PM and we can chat.

Good night, good luck, and God bless!


End file.
